Crown molding has been used as a platform for lighting for many years, often installed a short distance below a ceiling, still substantially high on a wall yet allowing for light within the crown molding to illuminate the ceiling and, indirectly, the room within which it is installed. Well before the advent of LED lighting electric lighting such as strings of miniature incandescent lights have been placed within crown molding to accent a room's lighting. Although this has long been considered desirable, there are challenges to installing this electric lighting. First, the installed lighting needs electricity in order to operate. In most cases, this is accomplished by connecting to the building's electrical power systems. However, this often required running electrical wires within the walls and to the crown molding. This is needed in almost all implementations of the current state of the art, as most electrical receptacles are mounted close to the floor, and cords from the crown molding to these receptacles would be unsightly.
Given that running electrical wires within the wall is expensive, and can reduce the attractiveness of a crown molding lighting system, a more desirable option would be to distribute electrical power by laying wires in the space between the crown molding and the wall. While this would be convenient, most electrical codes prohibit most electrical wires that carry electrical power to receptacles from being distributed outside a wall within crown molding, especially common non-metallic sheathed cable (NM cable). Metal armored electrical cables (MC cables) are often approved to be run outside of walls, and may be permitted to be run behind crown molding, but would still need to be able to interface with the luminaire or other desired electrical equipment in a manner that is consistent with applicable electrical codes.
The interface of building wiring to electrical devices outside the wall in almost all cases requires an electrical box or a dedicated space within the luminaire or other electrical device to safely wire electrical power to the luminaire, or to connect power cables to each other or many other electrical interface needs. Without a secure location within the crown molding to install code compliant electrical boxes and other useful electrical hardware, the expense of installing lighting within standard crown molding can be prohibitive.
Another source of code compliance difficulty involves the ability to protect cables within the crown molding from unsafe bends. Under most electrical codes and requirements, all electrical cables have a defined minimum bend radius. This is a bend radius where any bends sharper than that radius are considered unsafe, as they can damage the electrical cable. Minimum bend radii vary by type of cable, but are approximately 1 inch for Ethernet type Category 6 cables, and can be higher than 4 inches for high capacity MC cable, such as would carry a typical 20 amp branch circuit for lighting over long distances. This can be a challenge within existing crown molding as the corners where the crown molding meets are typically sharp, with the crown molding itself providing a sharp corner where rear surfaces of two straight crown molding sections meet at the intersections of two walls in an inside corner, and the walls providing a sharp corner where two walls meet in an outside corner. An ideal crown molding system for cable distribution would provide a cable path within corners that inherently prevents dangerous bends, as well as a safe location to mount a wide range of electrical hardware, such that the hardware can safely interface with any of the power and communications cables within the crown molding system and those power and communications cables can be safely distributed throughout the interior space within the crown molding system without being run inside of the walls.
Another factor in the energy efficiency of lighting is the efficacy of the luminaire. A high efficacy luminaire is one in which nearly all of the light generated reaches the area to be lit. Light producing LEDs typically emit light in a wide beam angle of 120 degrees. By placing an LED light source near the top of the molding and aimed outwardly, most of the light within that beam angle will light the ceiling as intended. However, a minority of that light will be directed towards the top of the wall and the part of the ceiling nearest the wall, where the indirect light will be less effective at lighting the space. A higher efficacy crown molding system would redirect as much of that light as possible back into effective use.
In addition to saving energy with a transition to LED light sources, advanced lighting systems have also been developed which coordinate lighting levels across a space with sensors and dimming controls. The most common types of sensors used in advanced lighting systems are photo sensors which can measure the light level in a given space and occupancy sensors which can sense when a space is occupied or vacant. A controller unit processes the data from the photo and occupancy sensors and can adjust the output of the lighting system within the space. Deployment of advanced lighting systems with sensors and controls can deliver considerable energy savings over and above converting lighting to LED sources. Currently advanced lighting systems are mandated under certain conditions in the State of California under Title 24 legislation and in New York City under Local Law 88, two major jurisdictions within the United States, with mandates for and codes requiring advanced lighting systems expected in more jurisdictions in the future. One of the major challenges of upgrading a legacy lighting system to an advanced lighting system is that sensors must be deployed around a space that can effectively measure that space, with the sensors connected to the lighting system controller and the controller connected to all the lighting fixtures providing general illumination within the space. Wireless connection is developing into an option, but may not be as reliable as a wired network connection, especially for essential areas such as egress passageways for emergency evacuation. The ability to provide a lighting system within crown molding within which all of the necessary components of an advanced lighting system including sensors, controllers and light sources can be easily and safely deployed, connected and powered, would help the deployment of advanced lighting systems.
Along with the development of LED lighting as an energy saving alternative, digital communications have also greatly increased. Not only has the amount of data generated and communicated rapidly increased, but also the amount of devices that can benefit from connectivity have also greatly increased. This has led to a need to communicate vast amounts of data from many different devices in a building as the Internet of Things (IoT) brings connectivity to a wide range of devices, including to lighting systems. In buildings with suspended ceilings, deployment of the cabling and devices necessary is facilitated by the large volume of space above the suspended ceiling within which communications cables and power cables can be easily distributed. However, a large number of buildings, particularly hotels and multi-family apartment buildings, are built using slab-on-slab construction where foundational concrete slabs make up each floor with as little height as possible for each floor between slabs, usually at the eight-foot minimum required for hotels and apartment buildings by most building codes in the U.S. In these buildings suspended ceilings are not often used as they would further reduce the occupant ceiling height. Also complicating cabling installation is the fact that the ceiling is structural concrete, meaning that in most cases electrical cables must be run in the walls. Communications cabling is particularly challenging because of a frequent upgrade cycle to higher capacity data cables. These upgrades can be very expensive as they often requiring opening up a horizontal trench within the walls to run upgraded cables. The ability to safely include and distribute communications cables within crown molding would have particular value if those cables remained accessible for replacement or upgrade without any building construction required.
Another area where energy efficiency gains are possible is in the efficient generation and distribution of direct current (DC) power. All LED lighting must use DC at the light producing LED level, and buildings are still almost entirely powered by utility-provided alternating current (AC). Also, many electronic devices as well as heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) could benefit from providing DC current directly. By converting AC to DC within larger centrally located high efficiency and high capacity rectifiers, efficiency losses due to many small DC conversions at each device could be averted. One of the major hurdles to realizing this vision of building-level DC power grids is the expense of distributing that power from the central rectifiers to points of use. If a crown molding system could safely distribute new power cables from a location within the floor of a building close the existing electrical panel around the interior space of that floor of the building, and those power cables could be installed without the expense of opening walls, the energy efficiency benefits of a DC power grid retro fit to an older slab-on-slab building might make more economic sense, leading to more energy efficient buildings with lower operating cost.
Hotel architecture makes it particularly suited to a crown molding based lighting system due to their usual characteristics. A floor of a hotel used for guest rooms is usually centered around one or more corridors, off of which each hotel room is accessed. The corridors, in particular, are challenging to light using only traditional wall-mounted fixtures. Traditionally, periodic wall mounted sconce-like fixtures are mounted on each side wall to light the hallway, aiming their light narrowly up and down the wall. The resulting lighting is accordingly variable, with bright spots at the fixtures and dimmer areas between them. Hotel corridors are further good targets for an efficient lighting system because they also are considered egress ways in the fire protection code and must be lit, at least at some level, 24 hours a day. Therefore, an energy saving lighting system would save more energy and reduce costs due to constant operation. Also, corridors are long relatively narrow spaces well suited to be lit entirely by well-designed indirect lighting from crown molding.
In addition, hotel rooms provide an opportunity to take advantage of a crown molding system that can provide efficient lighting, as well as communications cabling. First, most hotel rooms are relatively small spaces where a perimeter lighting system lighting indirectly within crown molding can provide a substantial portion of the needed light. Further, a crown molding system that can distribute communication cabling can also enable hotel automation systems, which can contribute greatly to energy savings within hotel rooms. Hotel automation systems can provide remote management of vacant hotel rooms to minimize the energy use when a guest is not present, manage the HVAC system to less energy consuming settings and even control motorized window coverings to reduce passive heating and cooling. If the communications cabling necessary to deploy such a system can be easily and safely installed within a crown molding system that is itself easily installed, the expense of installing an energy saving hotel automation system as well as the revenue lost due to construction time for the retro fit of an existing hotel could be substantially reduced.
An additional challenge for merging all the benefits of advancements of technology within existing buildings which were not originally built to serve these needs is mapping. The Global Positioning System (GPS) has become an essential tool for many people, providing freely available and accurate location data to many different devices, most notably mobile phones. When accurate and freely available positioning services such as GPS are combined with accurate maps such as are readily available on mobile phones, all manner of location based services can be provided. Most commonly the ability to provide navigation while driving to a location whose route is not apparent. This use of GPS location data combined with mapping has become incredibly widespread, even generating concerns about dependence on GPS mapping at the expense of other more traditional navigation skills. The challenge of bringing this widely adopted service into buildings is that the GPS system requires line-of-sight view of the sky in order to receive GPS location data. Those who provide mapping services do have the capability of generating accurate maps of buildings, however the accurate and freely available GPS system cannot provide location data reliably indoors. There are some methods of working around this problem including using the position of Wi-Fi network nodes to triangulate in indoor position. This has been engineered to provide some location data, but the accuracy of the positioning data is limited. Further, the location and physical security of installed Wi-Fi units can vary greatly. In particular, Wi-Fi routers are commonly attached to suspended ceiling grids. Attachment to suspended ceilings does provide easy access to power and communications cabling, but does not provide a great degree of physical stability or security, as suspended ceiling tiles are designed to be removed and frequently are to provide access to the many various services and cabling within a suspended ceiling. For this and other reasons Wi-Fi location data are not uniformly fine grained, and provides an opportunity for improvement in both accuracy and security.
One example where accuracy and security of indoor location data is critical is in robotic navigation. In particular, providing for a device such as a motorized wheelchair to be able to use both accurate indoor mapping combined with accurate fine-grained location data, with high assurance of the accuracy of that data, and employ that information to enable safe transportation of individuals for whom manual navigation of a motorized wheelchair is challenging or not possible. This example illustrates the need for not only accurate data on position, but for high confidence that the location data is accurate. In the previous example of a Wi-Fi router mounted to a suspended ceiling grid, if a service technician accesses the ceiling to service an item and changes the position of the Wi-Fi router the location data provided could be incorrect. Ideally a system of location beacons capable of the fine grained accuracy necessary when guiding the safe routing of an individual via a robotically controlled device would also incorporate a mounting location that provides a high degree of mechanical security, ease of installation, and ready access to power and communications cabling as needed.
Some notes on communications cables, power cables and the National Electrical Code may be helpful with respect to the invention described herein. There are three types of cables referred to herein with respect to the invention. Power cables, fiber optic cables for communications signals and copper conductor communications cables. Power cables carry power can be a safety hazard to people (as in from electrical shock) and can cause a fire (due to electric spark, generated heat or both) if not protected accordingly. The safe methods for deploying any electrical system with power cables are described in the National Fire Protection Association's book N.F.P.A. 70, also known as the National Electrical Code or the NEC. In particular, chapters 1 through 4 describe methods of safely deploying power cables and systems that use them. The NEC also defines a type of electric cable that carries electricity, but is not considered a safety risk due to shock or fire. These circuits are referred to as Class 2 circuits, and are limited to less than 100 watts of power, and a maximum of 30 volts. Class 2 circuits are often referred to as “touch safe” and the safety requirements for deployment are relaxed and less stringent commiserate with the reduced risk. Examples of Class 2 circuits are copper based communications cables such as Ethernet cables of any category type, DC power supplies for LED lighting at 24 volts and 100 watts, and the LED light strips themselves when powered by a class 2 power supply. Most electronic devices from digital thermostats for HVAC control to laptop computers and mobile phones are powered by a DC class 2 power supply. All class two cables must be protected from power cables, because a fault in a power cable could possibly energize a class 2 cable with dangerous energy levels. Therefore, a crown molding with segregated locations for power cables and copper communications cables would be desired. Fiber optic communications cables, however, are not at all electrically conductive as they transmit data as light over a non-conductive transparent medium. As such fiber optic cables do not pose a shock or fire risk by themselves and they are not at risk of being inappropriately over-energized due to a fault in power cables. Therefore, the NEC permits fiber optic cables to be co-located with power cables for distribution.
There are several current approaches in the current state of the art to address these issues. Creative Crown (www.creativecrown.com) offers a foam crown molding that is adhered to the wall. The molding is described as providing a location near the top of the crown molding, however there is no provision for a reflector to increase efficacy as part of the system. There is also no space or provision for a power source for the LED light strip to be contained on within or about the crown molding. Therefore, the power supply must be located outside of the crown molding. There are provisions for cables to be hidden within the crown molding, however this appears to be limited to communications wires and audio speaker wires. There is no provision for minimum bend radius, and there is no access to the cables once the crown molding is installed on the wall with adhesive.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,958,685 B2, Rowholt describes a crown molding comprised of two pieces that combine to result in a crown molding mounted at the junction of a wall and ceiling. There is no provision for lighting; however, Rowholt does describe electrical cable distribution, but this seems limited to low power communications cables, and not power cables. There seems to be no provision for protecting power cables, and their inclusion within the molding system is likely to be considered unsafe. Further, there is no provision for preventing unsafe bends, particularly at outside corners, as illustrated in FIG. 20. This system does not provide a location or method for electrical hardware or equipment to be safely installed.
Seamans et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 6,911,597 B2 describe a molding system of multiple molding types, including crown molding, designed to include electrical wiring. For their crown molding Seamans et al. describe a multi-part system that requires mounting at the ceiling. No provisions for lighting are included. The molding is described as safe for low power wiring only. There are no provisions for installing electrical hardware or other components. There is no provision for limiting the bends of cables so as to not cause damage.
Hoffman, a co-inventor of the present system and method, and MacMillan describe in U.S. Pat. No. 8,887,460 several crown molding embodiments. The crown molding described in FIG. 10 does show a compartment that could hold electrical cables, however no safety provisions for cable bends or cable protection are described. Horizontal support member 72 could provide a location for hardware, but no means for securing hardware are described. An electrical component such as an electrical box could be secured with adhesive to horizontal support member 72, however the component could not be easily removed, moved or replaced. Fasteners such as screws could secure an electrical box to horizontal support member 72, however those screws would penetrate into the compartment below, creating an unsafe condition for any cables contained there. It would not be feasible to use fasteners to secure an electrical box to mounting surface 18 and the face of the molding would prevent getting a tool in position. None of the embodiments in the '460 patent which all contain closed compartments could contain electrical cables describe any method of installing, accessing or securing cables. There is no provision for protecting cables from sharp bends. There is no provision for a high-efficacy lighting location or reflector.
In U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/011,474 Hoffman and MacMillan describe several embodiments of a crown molding system preferably designed to install easily and securely on irregular walls while maintaining a preferentially straight crown molding face as seen in the room. FIGS. 1 through 7 describe a crown molding system whose method prescribes securing connection between adjacent molding sections with a piercing fastener entering into the enclosed inner space. There is also no provision for cables entering or exiting the molding system. There is no provision for preventing unsafe bends, nor for securing electrical hardware. Embodiment 2, FIGS. 8 and 9, describe a crown molding with a closed compartment, however there are no provisions for safe cable entry or exit, and an electrical hardware on horizontal member would be similarly difficult to secure in a manner that is removable and does not penetrate the lower compartment. There is no provision for preventing sharp bends in cables, and no high efficacy lighting location nor a reflector. Embodiment 3, illustrated in FIGS. 10 through 13 describes a crown molding similar to embodiment 2, but with a split horizontal member. The lower compartment is now easily accessed for cables, however there are no provisions for providing a cable path that inherently limits bends. There is also no provision for protecting the cables from damage by penetration of the decorative face. Bulkhead 96 provides a convenient surface angled to allow a penetrating fastener to be easily driven to secure horizontal support structure 100, where that fastener will not penetrate the bottom compartment. Horizontal support structure serves to prevent the decorative face pulling away from the rear wall, but is not designed to securing tightly against outer horizontal member 98. There is also no high efficacy lighting location, nor an accompanying light reflector to maximize efficacy.